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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23246740">Jack and the Beanstalk</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesops_Corpse/pseuds/Aesops_Corpse'>Aesops_Corpse</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Folklore - Fandom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Folklore, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 15:35:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,870</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23246740</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesops_Corpse/pseuds/Aesops_Corpse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>This was a story written for a former ESL student when I lived in China. He was 9 or 10 years old at the time. I wanted to share some western folklore with him, but didn't like the oversimplified and generic tales I found online, so wrote my own version just for him. This story is dedicated to little Peter Hu. The essence of Jack and the Beanstalk and other giant killer stories is the never-ending tale of haves and havenots. I've always seen it as a critique of capitalism/feudalism. One day, I will rewrite other infamous tales like Red Riding Hood.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Jack and the Beanstalk</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a Kingdom of Seven Cities with a thousand chimneys, and a thousand smokestacks. </p><p>The cities were heaped close together on a black lifeless river that snaked in and around the cities. Thousands of dead fish floated on top of the oily water and down the river. The cities hissed… howled… sputtered… clanked… conked… honked… bonked… gronked… and whistled all day long—busy with the industry of mills and factories. Black smog darkened the kingdom. A dirty blizzard of black rain fell on the houses. In this sooty air lived poor workers and farmers. </p><p>On the bank of the river, was a weedy little farm, with a scruffy sod house. Black soot and grime covered all the wilting plants and trees, the few plants that could grow in the dead ground.</p><p>In this house lived a boy named Jack. Jack lived with his mother and father. His father worked in one of the dark smoking factories. He was gone all day. </p><p>His mother looked at the weedy garden, spraying a stinky mist of yellow bug killer on it with a 1-gallon lawn and garden hand-pump with a tough poly jar that featured a 14-inch wand and single-nozzle sprayer. She adjusted the nozzle to a long stream and then a fine mist. It stung Jack’s eyes. It made his skin itch too. His mother said, “Little Jack, I can’t grow anything in this soil; this sick ugly cabbage and kale just wont grow.” A bony cow sat on the ground, its head in the dirt, dusty with black soot. It had nothing to eat. It was a sad old cow called Yogurt. She handed him a basket of brown spotted cabbage, and a handful of pale wilted greens. “Take this into the city, to the market, and sell it. Take Black Yogurt. Sell her if you can. We will use the money to buy grain and wheat; we will grind it into flour to make our bread.” </p><p>Jack pulled the stubborn cow into the road. </p><p>“Hurry back Jack,” his mother cried. </p><p>He watched her sink into the dusty-black dried up dirt; she held her face in her hands and wept. Then he dragged the bone-thin cow up the road into the oily rain and smog smothering the sky. A thousand smokestacks and chimneys reached into the roiling wet clouds. The cities crouched over the river. </p><p>On the way to the market, down a crooked alley of shivering, spooling factories falling down in the street, Jack met a tall raggedy man in a long line of broken men waiting under a sign that said SOUP. They walked away with bowls of wormy porridge. “Hey boy,” the man coughed. He wore a long greasy coat, and had patches of scruffy hair on his face. His eyes were hidden in shadows. The man made him shiver. “I will give you something for that cow.”</p><p>Excited and surprised, Jack asked “How much?”</p><p>The raggedy man grinned. He pulled a sackcloth bag out of his coat pocket. The man wore old knitted gloves, stitched and shredded, with no fingertips. He had long broken hands with black dirt under his fingernails. “No boy, I have no silver, no copper, no coin,” he coughed. He poured the contents of the bag into his bird-claw hand. His eyes loomed out of the shadows. “I have something better. I have these magic beans.”</p><p>“No, no, I better not,” Jack hung his head, “my mother won’t like it. You see, Sir, our land is black and dead. In it, nothing will grow.”</p><p>The man stretched out his hand, showing the beans to Jack. The beans were milky white, and fat as thumbs. “But these are magic beans my boy. Ma-giic…” the man whispered. “You will never go hungry again.”</p><p>Jack stared at the beans in his hand. </p><p>“You know nothing, Jack, nothing,” the man scowled. He shut his hand and poured the beans into the sackcloth. He shoved the pouch into his coat. The beans were gone. “Give me the cow, and the beans are yours, I promise you that. I do not lie.”<br/>
Jack was desperate. He looked at the sick cow. He knew the beans might be a trick. But he had to do something, something different, or they would surely starve.  After he sold Black Yogurt, to buy wheat and grain, to make bread and the bread was all gone, or moldy, what then? What would they sell to eat when the cow was gone? “Okay, Mister,” Jack said. “You can have the cow. I want the beans.”</p><p>The man tossed him the sackcloth and took the dirty rope tied around Black Yogurt’s neck. He grinned. Jack was so exited he dropped the basket of greens on the ground and ran home to show his mother.</p><p>His mother was in the sod house stirring a bowl of onion broth over the black iron stove. </p><p>“Mama, mama,” he cried, “come see what I got! Our troubles are over, you will see.”</p><p>“What is it Jack?”</p><p>“I met an old man in the city. He gave me these beans, and said if we plant them we will never go hungry.” Jack poured the white beans into her hand.</p><p>“What? Jack! No.” His mother cried. “You foolish boy. Nothing in this ground will grow.”</p><p>“I told him,” Jack cried. “He said they were magic beans.”</p><p>His mother glared at him. Sadness in her eyes. “You foolish boy,” she said. “What did you give him for these beans?”</p><p>“I gave him the cow, Black Yoghurt.”</p><p>“I told you to take her to market. Now what will we eat!?” </p><p>She chucked the beans onto the floor and the beans bounced and scattered and rolled into the cracks between the floorboards and down a mouse hole. Shocked, Jack stared at the hole and a bean on the floor. He cried. His mother cried too. The phone rang. His mother answered it. It was his father. His mother said he was a foolish boy and handed Jack the cell phone. “Tell your father what you did,” she said to Jack.</p><p>“Are you coming home soon, Dad?”</p><p>“No son,” his father said. “I have to work a second-job. I will work as a chimney sweeper tonight.”</p><p>Jack told his father about the beans. His father said nothing, but Jack could hear him breathing in the phone. And then his father said, “Go to bed Jack.”</p><p>Jack went to bed. That night he slept badly, dreaming dark things. </p><p>After midnight his father coming in the door awakened him. In the lamplight, he could see his face covered in black soot. Jack pretended to sleep, watching his father sitting at the table while he drank a cup of water. The fire in the stove lit his hands and part of his face. Jack could see that his dirty fingers left black smudges on the glass— lit by the firelight. His father turned to look at him, a grim look on his straight face. Jack quickly shut his eyes. Soon he fell asleep. </p><p>In his sleep, he dreamt there was an earthquake. The ground shook, and the river drained—it disappeared. </p><p>When the day came, he felt the sun on his face. A chilly breeze blew the curtain in the window and he could see the sun swimming in the murk. The house shook. Jack sat up in bed and looked around. The house was empty. His father had gone to work. The house shook again, so hard this time he fell out of bed. A note fell from the table through the grey sunlight like a leaf that falls from a tree. He read it. It was from his mother. It said, </p><p>Jack,<br/>
I went to find work in the city.<br/>
You better find that cow, or I will sell you to the King.<br/>
Mom.</p><p>The house shivered and a green stalk suddenly crept into the window and slithered up the wall, pinning the dingy curtain to the brick and stone. Bright leaves unfurled. </p><p>Jack gasped. </p><p>The house shivered and another green stalk twisted through the mouse hole in the floor, thickened, and split the floorboards. The stalk sprouted big broad leaves and grew to the ceiling, spreading into the timbers and dirt. The sod roof crumbled and dirt fell into his hair. The house shook and lifted throwing him into the air. The house tilted and shook again. He climbed to his feet and looked out the window and gasped. He could not believe what he was seeing! </p><p>In the ground were little beanstalks pushing through the dusty earth. Little leaves unfurled at the tips. The beanstalks were bright and wet looking, shiny and clean.</p><p>The house shook and shivered and lifted into the air, tilting, so that his bed slid against the wall. Jack held on tightly to the windowsill. The iron stove in the middle of the room shook and coughed cold embers. The stalks in the ceiling pushed through the mud roof, thickening, growing. The roof was breaking apart. The ground fell away. And Jack and the house shot up into the sky, into the black smog, leaving the Kingdom of seven cities below. </p><p>Jack could see river getting smaller and smaller. He could see it winding like a snake through the black cities. He could see the chimneys and smokestacks and drain pipes. He could see the beanstalk beneath him, growing bigger and bigger, thicker and thicker, big broad leaves unfurling, branches spreading, shooting out of it, some with white bellflowers. The house shivered. And the ground fell away—getting further and further away, smaller and smaller. The house and the beanstalk shooting into blue sky and white clouds and yellow sunshine!</p><p>Jack couldn’t believe his eyes. He slid down to the other window as the house shot into the sky. He looked out at the branches and shoots of the green beanstalk gripping his house.</p><p>The beanstalk was five times thicker than his house. His home hung in the branches like a broken bird’s nest. The sun burned brightly, shining in his windows. The house shivered. And suddenly stopped.</p><p>He looked down. His glasses fell off his face and tumbled away, until they were gone—he couldn’t see them anymore. All he could see was blue. A beanstalk shooting up the middle. He blinked. He was so high the ground was a blurry green and brown haze. The Seven Cities wore a cloak of dirty smog.</p><p>He felt dizzy. And slid back into the house onto the floor. </p><p>Black ash from the iron stove dusted the rushes. And clumps of grassy sod. Green leafy stalks spread over the planks of reclaimed lumber, the crumby clay sub-floor, and walls and through the broken roof. Sunshine filled the gaps. A mouse squeaked in the corner under the bed, whiskers shivering, holding his snout in his little clawed hands. </p><p>The stalk unfurled into a snow-white cloud above the house. The vine grew some more, budding, and then unfurled a green wet leaf as big as Jack’s head. A white cluster of flowers in the middle. </p><p>“Wow!” Jack said, and leapt up onto his feet. He climbed into a deep green uncurling leaf with dark veins and up the stalk through the sod roof, wiping dirt out of his face, and climbed into the cloud, pushing the mist away. Sunshine warmed him and the fog cleared. He peered into blue sky. </p><p>The beanstalk pierced the middle of the cloud, and other fluffy clouds floated nearby, rolling like a hilly chain of islands. The shoots of the beanstalk crept from cloud to cloud making leafy bridges. </p><p>Jack pulled himself up into the top branches and stepped out onto a wide shoot. The plant was rough like bark on a tree, but moist. It felt soft under his feet, like a running track at school. The bough crawled over and through the clouds until it reached a giant rising cloud like a mountain with a huge castle on top. The castle was made of iron girders and glass with long black windows and colorful stained pointy glass rooftops. It had long archways and huge greenhouses overflowing with beautiful plants. </p><p>Jack ran to the castle as fast as he could. As he got closer he could smell something cooking, and saw grey smoke rising from a chimney. He was so hungry. He had to go inside and see if he could get something to eat. As he got closer he saw how big it really was. This was not a castle for any normal man. It was as big as a mountain. The gate was as big as the King’s palace in his hometown. </p><p>A very big man must live here, Jack thought, a very big man. A giant man. </p><p>Jack reached the door wondering how he would ever open it to get inside. But he noticed that the seam under the door, where the door meets the floor was as high as the gate into the King’s city. It towered high above him. A warm draught swept under the door—a breeze. It picked up, and became a wind blowing. Suddenly, a blizzard of dust blew through the crack. Jack laid flat on the ground and covered his head under his hood, waiting for the dust to blow by. When it fizzled out and he could breathe again, he got to his feet and crept inside, covered in heavy dust. His eyes itchy and dry. Dust on his tongue. He spit on the ground. “Yuck!”</p><p>He felt the ground shake. He entered a room, a kitchen. Inside a broom as tall as the tallest skyscraper with straw bristles as big as the tallest trees in the world leaned against a wall near a wooden bucket as big as a big hill. In the middle of the room was a giant oak table. On top he could see giant plates of sausage and giant chicken and giant pies and giant potatoes and giant carrots and giant beans and giant bowls of buttered peas and giant cups of red wine. The table was bigger than the seven cities. The food on top looked bigger than houses. On the kitchen counter there was more giant food—giant garlic cloves, giant knives, giant onions and giant apples and giant jars of honey and jam. Giant loaves of pumpernickel bread. Giant sugarplums and candy canes. And giant ropes of red and black peppermint licorice. </p><p>Jack crept over the floor. He had to jump over cracks in the wood. He came to a giant rack of giant wine bottles and his face was reflected in the rolling green glass, making him look big and funny. Giant grains of brown rice spilled out of a sack on the floor. Giant beans and giant oats spilled out of more giant sacks. Giant drops of pure water as big as umbrellas fell from a giant faucet into a giant barrel—the ripples like waves in a lake. Water dribbled down the sides like a waterfall, pooling on the floor and filling the cracks in the wood flooring, running like streams. He washed in the water. </p><p>A giant brick fireplace looked like an enormous dark cavern. Black with ash. No fire burned in its pits. Giant black iron pokers and shovels leaned against the brick hearth. Huge dirty white socks hung from the hearth, dripping with sweat. </p><p>The socks were big enough to fit a foot as big the Heaven’s Gate Bridge into the seven cities where he lived.  And they were dirty and oily like the cities too. </p><p>Jack walked under the table looking up. The table made a shadow over him. The legs were round and fat, and wider than ancient redwoods. Jack found a chest with a hill of gold coins. Gold coins piled on the floor beside it. The coins were bigger than wagon wheels. Just one of these coins would make him rich beyond his dreams—feeding his family forever. </p><p>There was a cupboard stacked with books and stuffed with jars and plates and bowls, and glasses and crockery and trinkets. </p><p>Jack climbed a leg on the table like a tree. He was very tired when he reached the top, and so he rested. But he didn’t rest long because he was so hungry. The table had a parquet veneer with lozenges radiating from a circle of rings at the center—like the sun. 	On the table were giant silver candlesticks. The candlesticks shimmered in the candlelight. Giant candles. Giant flames. Like smokestacks.</p><p>He licked a sausage and took out his pocketknife. With the knife he cut into the chicken and stuffed his face. He tapped a buttery pea as big as a boulder and punched it. 	He reached inside and pulled out the flesh, stuffing his face. </p><p>He started to feel stronger. </p><p>He climbed on the chicken and over the leg, leapt on to the rim of wine glass and pulled himself inside. He plunged into the red wine and drank, his skin turning pink. He felt dizzy. And climbed out. He slipped and dangled from the rim of the glass, feeling woozy. And dropped onto the table. </p><p>Then Jack heard a beautiful mournful sound. A cello.  Small, distant and soft. He strained to hear it. It was coming from the cupboard. He peered over the grand canyon between the table and cupboard shelf. Nestled among goblets and glass figurines—monsters and dragons, high on the top shelf, Jack could see a birdcage. In the cage was a beautiful girl with powder white skin and colorful butterfly wings with long shiny black hair. She played a wooden cello with a golden bow. The bow glinted in the candlelight. 	She moved the golden bow over the strings. She played a sad song. </p><p>The ground shook. The table beneath him shook. The flames of the giant candles shivered. Jack felt dizzy. He leaned against a silver candlestick. </p><p>A thunderous voice boomed in the kitchen and echoed in the rounded cathedral ceiling. </p><p>“Fie-fie-Foe-Fum! I smell the blood of a little little boy ! Be he alive, or be he dead—I will grind his bones to make my bread!”</p><p>Jack cringed. When he saw his own reflection looming large in the silver candlestick, he nearly jumped out of his skin.</p><p>“Fie-fie-Foe-Fum! I smell the blood of a little little boy ! Be he alive, or be he dead—I will grind his bones to make my bread!”</p><p>Jack stooped behind the silver column, and darted left, and he darted right. He hid behind the plate of chicken. The giant entered the kitchen. He sniffed the air. His nose was big and round with black hairs sticking out of it like sooty grass. The pores in his skin were as big as teacups. He had huge black shaggy eyebrows like scruffy hedges in the shire that darkened his black button eyes. His eyes as big and dark as millponds. He had hairy loping arms and a bent back.  Broad shoulders. He wore fine dress slacks and a white dress shirt made of the finest cotton. Pools of sweat darkened his underarms. Jack could smell his odor from the table. A red tie was slung back over his shoulder and loose around the neck. The giant sniffed the air. </p><p>“Fie-fie-Foe-Fum! I smell the blood of a little little boy ! Be he alive, or be he dead—I will grind his bones to make my bread!”</p><p>The fairy girl in the cage was startled and dropped her bow in her cage. She clung to the bars and peered down at Jack on the table. Even from this great distance, Jack could see that her eyes were polished silver—they glistened like dew drops on cherry blossoms. He stared at her and she stared back, her mouth wide open. The giant sat down at the table, sighing. He grunted. And tore a chicken leg off the roasted chicken. Jack stumbled, looking for a place to hide. </p><p>He ducked under the platter and crept along below the rim. He could see his pink reflection in the silver. Jack’s head swirled. He had too much wine. </p><p>The fairy began to play her cello and the giant became very sleepy. Soon he fell asleep and began to snore. Jack peered up at the fairy girl in the cage. She looked wild-eyed at him. Jack shaved some silver off the platter with his knife and stuck the shavings in his pocket. He ran over the table and climbed down a leg. </p><p>On the floor he tried to prize up a golden coin but it would not budge off the floor. It was just too heavy. He sat on top of it and rested, breathing heavy. </p><p>“What are you doing? Get out of here little boy,” the fairy yelled as quietly as she could. He glanced over his shoulder at the girl. “Go away boy, Run! He will smash you and grind you up until your bones are powder. He will make you into bread.”</p><p>Jack looked up the towering cupboard. Beside the cupboard were plates and lamps and books and jugs. On the shelves were reels of ribbon, string, and skeins of yarn. The ribbon and yarn hung down over the side. Jack decided to climb the cupboard. He couldn’t pick up a golden coin, but he could surely carry her golden bow. He didn’t want to steal it, but he was desperate. His family must eat. This would solve all their problems. Jack started his climb. He climbed the plates and the candlesticks and jumped onto the jugs and pulled a rope of yarn to him with his foot. He pulled on it and swung over and when he caught his breath, he started the climb. When he reached the top shelf he had to walk through a bunch of hurricane lamps, his face in the smoky glass; he had to walk among the figurines, monsters and dragons leering at him. Her cage was at the end on a stack of books. He climbed over a jade pendant and peered up at her.</p><p>“You should have left boy. You are in danger!”</p><p>She was only a little taller than Jack.</p><p>“Who are you?” Jack said.</p><p>“You have to go,” she said.</p><p>“I can’t go yet.”</p><p>“You must.” She shook her head.</p><p>“Will you come with me?”</p><p>Her wings fluttered and she hovered in the cage.</p><p>“Please.”</p><p>“Yes, try to open the door with your knife.”</p><p>Jack stuck his knife in the keyhole and tried to shimmy it open. It was no use. Upset, Jack pushed hard on the knife and it slipped and jammed in the hole—slicing his hand. He looked around and wrapped it with the frayed ends of silver ribbon to stop the bleeding. She reached out for him and blew softly on his hand. </p><p>Jack gripped the bars. “I can’t save you.” </p><p>She gazed at him. Jack could not believe how beautiful her eyes were. How beautiful her wings were. He was as enchanted by her as she was with him. </p><p>“Can I have your golden bow?” Jack asked.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“My family. I need it. My family will starve. I have to help them.”</p><p>She looked at the bow, and started to give it to him. “Will you come back for me?” the fairy girl asked him.</p><p>Just then, the giant choked on the air and coughed. He swam up out of sleep and sniffed the air, sitting up fast. </p><p>“Fie-fie-Foe-Fum! I smell the blood of a little little boy ! Be he alive, or be he dead—I will grind his bones to make my bread!”</p><p>Jack looked at his hand. And at the bow. He snatched it from her. It clanged on the bars. And he started to run back through the bell shaped glasses of hurricane lamps and figurines of dragons. He stumbled into a jar of honey he didn’t see before—in it was a fancy man, his mouth open wide, frozen, stuck, dead, preserved forever like a fly in a stone of amber. Jack turned and called back, “I will come for you.”</p><p>“Fie-fie-Foe-Fum! I smell the blood of a little little boy ! Be he alive, or be he dead—I will grind his bones to make my bread!”</p><p>Jack slung the bow over a ribbon and glided down through the air and dropped onto the floor. He picked himself up, the golden bow in his hand, and ran for the crack under the door. The giant stood and looked around. Jack ran as fast as he could. The giant sniffed the air. </p><p>“Fie-fie-Foe-Fum! I smell the blood of a little little boy ! Be he alive, or be he dead—I will grind his bones to make my bread!”</p><p>The giant looked around the table and on the floor, but moved very slowly. Jack hid in the straw of the broom. </p><p>“Giant!” the fairy girl screamed.</p><p>“Huh,” he spun around, “what do you want?”</p><p>“I can’t find my bow.”</p><p>“Hmm, what do you mean, bug?”</p><p>While the fairy talked to the giant, Jack slipped out under the crack. The last thing he heard her say was, “I fell asleep, and when I woke up, it was gone.”</p><p>Jack ran through the greenhouse and through the garden and over the creeping branches of the beanstalk. The white flowers were in full bloom. They smelled like jasmine. He ran over the green shoot, swiping leaves out of his face, and passing through clouds and over blue skies until he reached the great beanstalk. He jumped on it and climbed down through his house and down down down the beanstalk. </p><p>He showed his parents who were standing at the bottom of the beanstalk gawking up into the sky. They stood in the brown spot where their little sod house used to be. Then the beanstalk began to shake. White flower petals rained down. </p><p>Jack could see the giant climbing down. “Hurry!” Jack shouted. And he pushed by his sooty-black father.  </p><p>Buried in a stump there was a rusted brown axe. Jack tried to push and pull it out. It was stuck. He shook it and pushed on it until it sliced deeper into the wood. </p><p>His father nudged him out of the way and took the handle fast in his hands. He wrenched it out and free of the stump. </p><p>Jack snatched it from his hands and started to whack at the beanstalk—whack! Whack! Whack! The giant got closer and closer—looming ever larger and larger in the sky. Whack! Whack! Whack! Jack swung the axe and chopped and chopped at the beanstalk, but it was just too thick. The giant’s voice thundered in the sky—</p><p>“Fie-fie-Foe-Fum! I smell the blood of a little little boy ! Be he alive, or be he dead—I will grind his bones to make my bread!”</p><p>Jack’s father had a go. He lined up the axe where his boy had started to hack at the beanstalk, aimed true and swung as hard as he could. He swung again and again, and the beanstalk shook and shivered, but it was no use. Jack saw his father’s mandolin on the ground. It must have fallen out of the house. Jack got an idea. He plucked the strings with the golden bow and then strummed it back and forth until he was fiddling a kind of fast devilish song. </p><p>“Fie-fie-Foe-Fum! I smell the blood of a little little boy ! Be he alive, or be he dead—I will grind his bones to make my bread!”</p><p>Jack seesawed back and forth on the strings, and then slowed and played gently, softly—a sad song. The giant slowed down and listed on a branch. Jack tapped the strings of the mandolin and strummed the bow gently. The giant slumped over a branch, clinging to the stalk, falling into sleep, and then falling back, letting go, falling off the beanstalk—falling down down down—head thrashing leaves on the way down, shaking white flowers into the smog. The beanstalk shook and shivered. The giant plunged through the smog faster and faster—falling falling falling. Giant gold coins fell from his pockets, showering the countryside. </p><p>On the way down the giant hit the beanstalk and it snapped, falling over him.<br/>
He hit the ground with an earth shaking boom and rumble. Tremors shook the ground. Black soot and rock swept over them in a howling wind. The giant lay dead in a crater made by his big body. Giant gold coins stuck out of the ground and lay in craters. The broken beanstalk crashed into the river and the city. </p><p>Jack and his dad shaved off slivers of the golden coins and bought fancy apartments in the city and feasted on roast duck and lamb chops, pumpkin spice pie, golden yams, cranberry tarts, raisin carrot and marshmallow casserole, plum wine, and ginger ale, lemon meringue, and broccoli spears. He had enough gold to buy the whole world.</p><p>Jack peered into the sky over the giant broken beanstalk. </p><p>The fairy girl was up there in a cage.</p><p> </p><p>The end.</p>
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